How are you doing? I don\u2019t mean either mentally or physically, but are you keeping up with the Jones\u2019? Are you doing as well as you should for the stage of career you\u2019re at, and how do you know? The reality is, in academia we\u2019re not very good at helping each other understand how we\u2019re faring. Certainly, in Cambridge over my career, it has seemed that silence is the norm on this front.<\/p>\n
I am reminded of this while preparing for an interview about what my life was like \u2018mid-career\u2019. Of course, that term is indeterminate: my mid-career might be someone else\u2019s later or earlier depending on a whole range of individual circumstances. After all, if you\u2019re like Carol Robinson<\/a> and take a seven year career break to have three children immediately after your PhD, you would be starting your first postdoc considerably later than the average. (I\u2019ve just been reminded of her unusual yet spectacularly successful career trajectory, having been listening to my own interview<\/a> with her from a few years back.) It isn\u2019t simply a question of age, that is irrelevant, it is also about experience and maturity, so that those seven years are likely to have made a big difference in ways other than simply publication output.<\/p>\n Thinking back to the stage I think of as \u2018mid-career\u2019, that bit between my first permanent position and becoming a professor, I remember a survey being done of the (still relatively few) women academics across the University on behalf of the University. It was never published, too damning I think, and of course I don\u2019t still have a copy 25 or so years on, but I do remember the surprise with which the interviewer reacted to being told time and time again, by women, that they found the lack of feedback on their progress disconcerting or worse. Unlike the business context in which the interviewer worked (I guess they came from a consultancy), such feedback just didn\u2019t occur in the normal run of things. Perhaps if they\u2019d interviewed men they\u2019d have heard the same anxiety expressed.<\/p>\n I well remember struggling with the concept of what was \u2018good enough\u2019, be it in terms of research outputs, looking after my students, attendance at conferences or teaching and \u2018service\u2019. It was an eye-opener to be told, during one of my infrequent appraisals that, as a rule of thumb, I shouldn\u2019t expect to referee more papers than I myself submitted. That it was OK to decline some requests. Naively \u2013 is this a gendered thing, or merely down to personality? \u2013 I had felt a sense of obligation to accept all papers or grants to referee as long as I felt competent. (Actually, \u2018competent\u2019 itself raises all sorts of issues derived from impostor syndrome, but that\u2019s another story.) I always suspected \u2013 because no one told me otherwise \u2013 that I wasn\u2019t up to the mark in my service, not doing my \u2018bit\u2019. I\u2019m sure this was exacerbated because I felt I was cutting corners while I tried to bring up two small children.<\/p>\n It was only when the department introduced a workload model, possibly on the back of its Athena Swan application, that I realised that my service load was far higher than most people\u2019s \u2013 but by then I was a senior professor and I suspect already deputy head of department at the time. It was a bit late for me, although a sense of guilt about whether I was doing enough was still never far away from my thoughts. I am glad that people can get some sense of their contribution through such models, albeit how a department weights teaching versus serving on a university committee, or turning up for open days versus organising lab classes, will always be debatable. There is unlikely ever to be a standard \u2018scoring\u2019 system for such a model.<\/p>\n However, it is the question of \u2018good enough\u2019 in terms of issues related, not just to service but to research, that is likely to eat at people most early in their careers (possibly later too). It is good that the tyranny of journal impact factors appears to be receding, but that doesn\u2019t stop people \u2013 namely promotion and appointment committees \u2013 silently valuing a Nature or PNAS paper higher than one appearing in other journals, however relevant and appropriate such a journal might be for a particular piece of work. When I was mid-career I felt the appropriateness of a journal was far more important than having to go through the hassle of arguing with an editor\/referee multiple times, but that is a luxury the ECRs of today probably do not feel they have. There are plenty of other metrics that an early-mid career academic may fret about. How many grants, from where and worth how much, are \u2018enough\u2019? Who is the judge? Is my sub-discipline sufficiently comparable to Dr Bloggs down the corridor that the fact that they have two minor grants from (insert funder of choice) trumps my one large grant from (insert another funder)? I would guess that, male or female, most of us have worried about \u2018enough\u2019 in this sense.<\/p>\n The trouble with academia, as has been said over and over again, is that it is inherently competitive. We are unfortunately only too likely always to be looking over our shoulders at those coming up behind us, as well as our peers, to try to work out how we\u2019re doing. I know how much I would have benefitted from someone telling me that I was well within the bounds of \u2018acceptable\u2019 and, given I had two small children if I wanted not to gad all around the world presenting my research at international conferences, that was fine. If my grant applications failed this round, just keep going and try again. A single (or even multiple) failure was not terminal, particularly if elsewhere the students I acquired, through whatever route, were producing good stuff. But no, such messages were rarely given to me in the normal run of things or even at appraisals.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure people are now better prepared to carry out such conversations than those who appraised me ever were, in that training about how to do this is likely to be provided by the institution, and mentors may more routinely be allocated to new staff and postdocs. I don\u2019t think I ever fared quite as badly as the colleague who went to his appraisal with a list of issues on their mind to raise and came out saying their appraiser had indeed agreed this was a list to worry about, without offering a single word of constructive advice.<\/p>\n On the other hand, I was very taken aback by the reaction I got from my own appraiser (possibly the same professor) when I raised the fact that my scientific credibility had been publicly and totally inappropriately trashed at a departmental meeting. I felt, both that others at the meeting should have pointed out the unreasonableness of the criticism laid against me, and that the person who\u2019d been out of line should have apologised thereafter. It was perhaps, as has been said more recently in another context, only the \u2018normal cut and thrust\u2019 of (departmental) politics, regretted thereafter. Instead, I was told I was the one who should have apologised. I never worked out for what and it seemed strange advice.<\/p>\n I hope early-mid-career researchers now do get much better advice and mentorship regarding their progress and standing. We don\u2019t all need to be superstars, but everyone wants to know they\u2019re not lagging unreasonably behind, in that other, much feared word, failing . More feedback and support can only benefit us, at any stage in our career. Why should academia be quite so niggardly in providing this? Maybe the world has moved on from my day, and everyone, whatever their gender or skin colour, gets this support automatically and professionally. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t believe that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How are you doing? I don\u2019t mean either mentally or physically, but are you keeping up with the Jones\u2019? Are you doing as well as you should for the stage of career you\u2019re at, and how do you know? The … Continue reading